As much as I love a movie that shakes things up, that does the unexpected, that turns things ingeniously on their heads, and throws an often-bloody wrench into the usual way of doing things, there’s a certain comfort in a movie that sits back into tradition and just (literally) executes established tropes in elegant ways. Even if that movie is uncomfortable in all those same ways.
In Rod Blackhurst’s new film Dolly, there’s not much that you haven’t seen before. It’s not very long on story and doesn’t stop or even slow down much to ask “why.” In fact, as a tribute to the French Extremity branch of horror that we love around these parts and which Blackhurst is definitely playing at, that’s pretty on-brand. I’m still trying to suss out the “whys” of movies like Bustillo and Maury’s L’Interieur (2007) and I don’t think too many would disagree that Laugier’s Martyrs (2008) leaves you with more questions than answers by the time the credits roll.
And that’s the point. The “why” of Dolly is not very well developed, and fairly thin by design. You’re experiencing the confusion of this breakneck violence orgy right along with our main characters, Macy and Chase, and you start to wonder if it could just as easily be you with your ear torn off and your jaw hanging limply off the rest of your skull. And no more will you be satisfied by the answer than you were about what L’Interieur’s antagonist – who doesn’t even get the honor of an honorific and is just called “la femme” – is doing with those darned scissors.
Dolly is about a cute enough couple, Macy (Fabianne Therese) and Chase (Sean William Scott), who are about to head out into the woods for a hike. Chase plans to propose. But not far down the trail, the pair encounter a shrine of sorts constructed of several baby dolls that have been nailed to trees around a clearing. Hiding around the outskirts of that clearing is Dolly (Max the Impaler), who is something of a Leatherface stand-in. She’s a bigger girl, clad in streaky, filthy clothes that evoke a child, and her face is covered with a jacked-up porcelain mask that feels appropriately doll-like. She abducts Macy and sets her up with an extremely creepy setup where Macy’s put in an all-white doll getup and stuffed into her very own crib. From here, we follow Macy’s harrowing attempts to escape Dolly’s clutches, all intercut with Chase’s parallel ordeal. I really like this structure, combined with splitting the story into discrete chapters that give the proceedings a sordid storybook feel.
Both Therese and Max provide fantastic performances that feel authentically desperate and deranged, respectively. Their push-pull of control and chaos yanks Dolly between violent disorientation and moments of almost gleeful carnage. It’s one of those films that doesn’t let up, and it feels appropriate to discuss it during this month in particular, where the time period we’re covering at BBP during this 31 Days of Horror includes the peak of French Extremity. Blackhurst’s film and script feel like they could’ve been plucked from the best of that period, while also incorporating a modern sensibility with a woman-coded antagonist in Dolly herself. Max’s portrayal feels like the perfect throwback to a Leatherface or the antagonist of L’Interieur while also making the character completely unique.
Blackhurst has, with Dolly, crafted a deranged, terrifying descent into darkness while paying tribute to one of my favourite subsets of horror. It explores an extreme flavour of horror in which I find a kind of demented comfort, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
